In 1380, Olaf II of Denmark inherited the Kingdom of Norway, titled as Olaf IV, after the death of his father Haakon VI of Norway, who was married to Olaf's mother Margrete I. Margrete I was ruler of Norway from her son's death in 1387 until her own death in 1412.

Denmark, Norway and Sweden established and formed the Kalmar Union in 1397. Following Sweden's departure in 1523, the union was effectively dissolved, from 1536/1537, Denmark and Norway formed a personal union that would eventually develop into the 1660 integrated state called Denmark–Norway. Prior to 1660, Denmark–Norway was a constitutional and elective monarchy in which the King's power was limited; in that year it became one of the most stringent absolute monarchies in Europe.

The union lasted until 1814,[4][5] when the Treaty of Kiel decreed that Norway (except for the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland) be "ceded" to Sweden; this however was not recognised by Norway, which successfully resisted the attempt in the 1814 Swedish–Norwegian War and afterwards entered into a much looser personal union with Sweden as one of two equal kingdoms.

The term "Kingdom of Denmark" is sometimes used to include both countries in the period, since the political and economic power emanated from the Danish capital, Copenhagen, these terms cover the "royal territories" of the Oldenburgs as it was in 1460, excluding the "ducal territories" of Schleswig and Holstein. The administration used two official languages, Danish and German, and for several centuries both a Danish and German Chancery existed.[6]

The term "Denmark–Norway" reflects the historical and legal roots of the union, it is adopted from the Oldenburg dynasty's official title. The kings always used the style "King of Denmark and Norway, the Wends and the Goths" (Konge til Danmark og Norge, de Venders og Gothers). Denmark and Norway, sometimes referred to as the "Twin Realms" (Tvillingrigerne) of Denmark–Norway, had separate legal codes and currencies, and mostly separate governing institutions. Following the introduction of absolutism in 1660, the centralisation of government meant a concentration of institutions in Copenhagen. Centralisation was supported in many parts of Norway, where the two-year attempt by Sweden to control Trøndelag had met strong local resistance and resulted in a complete failure for the Swedes and a devastation of the province, this allowed Norway to further secure itself militarily for the future through closer ties with the capital Copenhagen. The term "Sweden–Finland" is sometimes, although with less justification, applied to the contemporary Swedish realm between 1521 and 1809. Finland was never a separate kingdom, and was completely integrated with Sweden, while Denmark was the dominant component in a personal union.

Denmark–Norway maintained numerous colonies from the 17th to 19th centuries over various parts around India. Colonies included the town of Tranquebar and Serampore, the last towns it had control over were sold to the United Kingdom in 1845. Rights in the Nicobar Islands were sold in 1869.

The three kingdoms then united in the Kalmar Union in 1397. Sweden broke out of this union and re-entered it several times, until 1521, when Sweden finally left the Union, leaving Denmark–Norway (including overseas possessions in the North Atlantic and the island of Saaremaa in modern Estonia).

The outbreak of the Northern Seven Years' War in 1563 is mainly attributed[by whom?] to Denmark's displeasure over the dismantling of the Kalmar Union in the 1520s. When the Danish king Christian III (reigned 1534–1559) included the traditionally Swedish insignia of three crowns into his own coat of arms, the Swedes interpreted this as a Danish claim over Sweden; in response Erik XIV of Sweden (reigned 1560–1568) added the insignia of Norway and Denmark to his own coat of arms.

After Swedish king Erik introduced obstacles in an attempt to hinder trade with Russia, Lübeck and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth joined Denmark in a war alliance. Denmark then carried out some naval attacks on Sweden, which effectively started the war, after seven years of fighting, the conflict concluded in 1570 with a status quo ante bellum.

Because of Denmark–Norway's dominion over the Baltic Sea (dominium maris baltici) and the North Sea, Sweden had the intention of avoiding paying Denmark's Sound Toll. Swedish king Charles IX's way of accomplishing this was to try to set up a new trade route through Lapland and northern Norway; in 1607 Charles IX declared himself "King of the Lapps in Nordland", and started collecting taxes in Norwegian territory.

Denmark and King Christian IV of Denmark protested against the Swedish actions, as they had no intentions of letting another independent trade route open, Christian IV also had an intent of forcing Sweden to rejoin its union with Denmark; in 1611 Denmark finally invaded Sweden with 6000 men and took the city of Kalmar. On January 20, 1613, the Treaty of Knäred was signed in which Norway's land route from Sweden was regained by incorporating Lapland into Norway, and Swedish payment of the Älvsborg Ransom for two fortresses which Denmark had taken in the war. However, Sweden achieved an exemption from the Sound Toll, which had only previously been secured by Britain and Holland.

Not long after the Kalmar war, Denmark–Norway got involved in another greater war, in which they fought together with the mainly north German and other Protestant states against the Catholic states led by German Catholic League.

Christian IV sought to become the leader of the north German Lutheran states, however following the Battle of Lutter in 1626 Denmark met a crushing defeat, this led to most of the German Protestant states ceasing their support for Christian IV. After another defeat at the Battle of Wolgast and following the Treaty of Lübeck in 1629, which forbade Denmark from future intervening in German affairs, Denmark's participation in the war came to an end.

Sweden was very successful during the Thirty Years' War, while Denmark was a failure. Sweden saw an opportunity of a change of power in the region. Denmark–Norway had a threatening territory surrounding Sweden, and the Sound Dues were a continuing irritation for the Swedes; in 1643 the Swedish Privy Council determined Swedish territorial gain in an eventual war against Denmark–Norway to have good chances. Not long after this, Sweden invaded Denmark–Norway.

Denmark was poorly prepared for the war, and Norway was reluctant to attack Sweden, which left the Swedes in a good position.

The Dano-Swedish War (1657–1658), a part of the Second Northern War, was one of the most devastating wars for the Dano-Norwegian kingdom, after a huge loss in the war, Denmark–Norway was forced in the Treaty of Roskilde to give Sweden nearly half its territory. This included Norwegian province of Trøndelag and Båhuslen, all remaining Danish provinces on the Swedish mainland, and the island of Bornholm.

However, two years later, in 1660, there was a follow-up treaty, the Treaty of Copenhagen, which gave Trøndelag and Bornholm back to Denmark–Norway.

In the aftermath of Sweden's final secession from the Kalmar Union in 1521, civil war and Protestant Reformation followed in Denmark and Norway. When things had settled down, the Rigsraad (High Council) of Denmark became weakened, and was abolished in 1660[7] when Denmark–Norway became an absolutist state and Denmark a hereditary monarchy, as Norway had been since the Middle Ages. These changes were confirmed in the Lex Regia signed on 14 November 1665, stipulating that all power lay in the hands of the king, who was only responsible towards God,[8] the Norwegian Riksråd was assembled for the last time in 1537. Norway kept its separate laws and some institutions, such as a royal chancellor, and separate coinage and army. Norway also had its own royal standard flag until 1748, after that the Dannebrog became the only official merchant flag in the union.

Denmark had lost its provinces in Scania after the Treaty of Roskilde and was always eager to retrieve them, but as Sweden had grown into a great power it would not be an easy task. However, Christian V saw an opportunity when Sweden got involved in the Franco-Dutch War, and after some hesitation Denmark invaded Sweden in 1675.

Although the Danish assault began as a great success, the Swedes led by 19-year-old Charles XI counter-attacked and took back the land that was being occupied, the war was concluded with the French dictating peace, with no permanent gains or losses to either of the countries.

Battle between the frigate HMS Tartar and Norwegian gunboats near Bergen in 1808.

During the French Revolutionary Wars Denmark–Norway at first tried to stay neutral, so it could continue its trade with both France and the United Kingdom, but when it entered the League of Armed Neutrality, the British considered it a hostile action, and attacked Copenhagen in 1801 and again in 1807. In the 1807 attack on Copenhagen the British army confiscated the entire Dano-Norwegian navy on the grounds that Denmark–Norway was about to launch an attack on Britain, the Dano-Norwegian navy had been the only navy left in Europe able to challenge the British navy after the destruction of the Spanish–French navy in the Battle of Trafalgar. The Dano-Norwegian navy was however not prepared for any military operation and the British soldiers found the Dano-Norwegian navy still in dock after the winter season, the Dano-Norwegians were more concerned about preserving their continued neutrality and the entire Dano-Norwegian army was therefore gathered at Danevirke in the event of a French attack, leaving Copenhagen vulnerable to a British attack. The British attack on Danish neutrality effectively forced the Dano-Norwegians into an alliance with Napoleon, and Denmark–Norway allied itself with France.

Denmark–Norway was defeated and had to cede the territory of mainland Norway to the King of Sweden at the Treaty of Kiel. Norway's overseas possessions were kept by Denmark, but the Norwegians objected to the terms of this treaty, and a constitutional assembly declared Norwegian independence on 17 May 1814 and elected the Crown Prince Christian Frederik as king of independent Norway. Following a Swedish invasion, Norway was forced to accept a personal unionbetween Sweden and Norway, but retained its liberal constitution and separate institutions, except for the foreign service. The union was dissolved in 1905.

There was however one other religious "reformation" in the kingdom during the rule of Christian VI, a follower of Pietism, the period from 1735 until his death in 1746 has been nicknamed "the State Pietism", as new laws and regulations were established in favor of Pietism. Though Pietism did not last for a substantial time, numerous new small pietistic resurrections occurred over the next 200 years; in the end, Pietism was never firmly established as a lasting religious grouping.

1.
Unitary state
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The majority of states in the world have a unitary system of government. Of the 193 UN member states,165 of them are governed as unitary states, unitary states are contrasted with federal states. In a unitary state, sub-national units are created and abolished, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is an example of a unitary state. Many unitary states have no areas possessing a degree of autonomy, in such countries, sub-national regions cannot decide their own laws. Examples are the Republic of Ireland and the Kingdom of Norway, in federal states, the sub-national governments share powers with the central government as equal actors through a written constitution, to which the consent of both is required to make amendments. This means that the units have a right of existence. The United States of America is an example of a federal state, under the U. S. Constitution, powers are shared between the federal government and the states

2.
Copenhagen
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Copenhagen, Danish, København, Latin, Hafnia) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark. Copenhagen has an population of 1,280,371. The Copenhagen metropolitan area has just over 2 million inhabitants, the city is situated on the eastern coast of the island of Zealand, another small portion of the city is located on Amager, and is separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the strait of Øresund. The Øresund Bridge connects the two cities by rail and road, originally a Viking fishing village founded in the 10th century, Copenhagen became the capital of Denmark in the early 15th century. Beginning in the 17th century it consolidated its position as a centre of power with its institutions, defences. After suffering from the effects of plague and fire in the 18th century and this included construction of the prestigious district of Frederiksstaden and founding of such cultural institutions as the Royal Theatre and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Later, following the Second World War, the Finger Plan fostered the development of housing, since the turn of the 21st century, Copenhagen has seen strong urban and cultural development, facilitated by investment in its institutions and infrastructure. The city is the cultural, economic and governmental centre of Denmark, Copenhagens economy has seen rapid developments in the service sector, especially through initiatives in information technology, pharmaceuticals and clean technology. Since the completion of the Øresund Bridge, Copenhagen has become integrated with the Swedish province of Scania and its largest city, Malmö. With a number of connecting the various districts, the cityscape is characterized by parks, promenades. Copenhagen is home to the University of Copenhagen, the Technical University of Denmark, the University of Copenhagen, founded in 1479, is the oldest university in Denmark. Copenhagen is home to the FC København and Brøndby football clubs, the annual Copenhagen Marathon was established in 1980. Copenhagen is one of the most bicycle-friendly cities in the world, the Copenhagen Metro serves central Copenhagen while the Copenhagen S-train network connects central Copenhagen to its outlying boroughs. Serving roughly 2 million passengers a month, Copenhagen Airport, Kastrup, is the largest airport in the Nordic countries, the name of the city reflects its origin as a harbour and a place of commerce. The original designation, from which the contemporary Danish name derives, was Køpmannæhafn, meaning merchants harbour, the literal English translation would be Chapmans haven. The English name for the city was adapted from its Low German name, the abbreviations Kbh. or Kbhvn are often used in Danish for København, and kbh. for københavnsk. The chemical element hafnium is named for Copenhagen, where it was discovered, the bacterium Hafnia is also named after Copenhagen, Vagn Møller of the State Serum Institute in Copenhagen named it in 1954. Excavations in Pilestræde have also led to the discovery of a well from the late 12th century, the remains of an ancient church, with graves dating to the 11th century, have been unearthed near where Strøget meets Rådhuspladsen

3.
Oslo
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Oslo is the capital and the most populous city in Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality, founded in the year 1040, and established as a kaupstad or trading place in 1048 by Harald Hardrada, the city was elevated to a bishopric in 1070 and a capital under Haakon V of Norway around 1300. Personal unions with Denmark from 1397 to 1523 and again from 1536 to 1814, after being destroyed by a fire in 1624, the city was moved closer to Akershus Fortress during the reign of Christian IV of Denmark and renamed Christiania in his honour. It was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838, following a spelling reform, it was known as Kristiania from 1877 to 1925, at which time its original Norwegian name was restored. Oslo is the economic and governmental centre of Norway, the city is also a hub of Norwegian trade, banking, industry and shipping. It is an important centre for industries and maritime trade in Europe. The city is home to companies within the maritime sector, some of which are among the worlds largest shipping companies, shipbrokers. Oslo is a city of the Council of Europe and the European Commission intercultural cities programme. Oslo is considered a city and ranked Beta World City in studies carried out by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group. It was ranked one in terms of quality of life among European large cities in the European Cities of the Future 2012 report by fDi magazine. A survey conducted by ECA International in 2011 placed Oslo as the second most expensive city in the world for living expenses after Tokyo. In 2013 Oslo tied with the Australian city of Melbourne as the fourth most expensive city in the world, as of January 1,2016, the municipality of Oslo has a population of 658,390, while the population of the citys urban area was 942,084. The metropolitan area had an population of 1.71 million. The population was during the early 2000 increasing at record rates and this growth stems for the most part from international immigration and related high birth rates, but also from intra-national migration. The immigrant population in the city is growing faster than the Norwegian population. As of January 1,2016, the municipality of Oslo has a population of 658,390, the urban area extends beyond the boundaries of the municipality into the surrounding county of Akershus, the total population of this agglomeration is 942,084. To the north and east, wide forested hills rise above the city giving the location the shape of a giant amphitheatre. The urban municipality of Oslo and county of Oslo are two parts of the entity, making Oslo the only city in Norway where two administrative levels are integrated

4.
Danish language
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There are also minor Danish-speaking communities in Norway, Sweden, Spain, the United States, Canada, Brazil and Argentina. Due to immigration and language shift in urban areas, around 15–20% of the population of Greenland speak Danish as their home language. Along with the other North Germanic languages, Danish is a descendant of Old Norse, until the 16th century, Danish was a continuum of dialects spoken from Schleswig to Scania with no standard variety or spelling conventions. With the Protestant Reformation and the introduction of printing, a language was developed which was based on the educated Copenhagen dialect. It spread through use in the system and administration though German. Today, traditional Danish dialects have all but disappeared, though there are variants of the standard language. The main differences in language are between generations, with youth language being particularly innovative, Danish has a very large vowel inventory comprising 27 phonemically distinctive vowels, and its prosody is characterized by the distinctive phenomenon stød, a kind of laryngeal phonation type. The grammar is moderately inflective with strong and weak conjugations and inflections, nouns and demonstrative pronouns distinguish common and neutral gender. As in English, Danish only has remnants of a case system, particularly in the pronouns. Its syntax is V2, with the verb always occupying the second slot in the sentence. Danish is a Germanic language of the North Germanic branch, other names for this group are the Nordic or Scandinavian languages. Along with Swedish, Danish descends from the Eastern dialects of the Old Norse language, Scandinavian languages are often considered a dialect continuum, where there are no sharp dividing lines between the different vernacular languages. Like Norwegian and Swedish, Danish was significantly influenced by Low German in the Middle Ages, Danish itself can be divided into three main dialect areas, West Danish, Insular Danish, and East Danish. Danish is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Swedish, both Swedes and Danes also understand Norwegian better than they understand each others languages. By the 8th century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse, had some changes. This language was called the Danish tongue, or Norse language. Norse was written in the alphabet, first with the elder futhark. From the 7th century the common Norse language began to undergo changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, most of the changes separating East Norse from West Norse started as innovations in Denmark, that spread through Scania into Sweden and by maritime contact to southern Norway

5.
German language
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German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form

6.
Renaissance Latin
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They looked to golden age Latin literature, and especially to Cicero in prose and Virgil in poetry, as the arbiters of Latin style. They abandoned the use of the sequence and other forms of metre. The humanists condemned the large body of medieval Latin literature as Gothic—for them, some 16th-century Ciceronian humanists also sought to purge written Latin of medieval developments in its orthography. They insisted, for example, that ae be written out in full wherever it occurred in classical Latin, therefore, the first generations of humanists did not dedicate much care to the orthography till the late sixteenth and seventeenth century. The humanist plan to remake Latin was largely successful, at least in education, schools taught the humanistic spellings, and encouraged the study of the texts selected by the humanists, to the large exclusion of later Latin literature. Genealogia deorum gentilium by Giovanni Boccaccio 1425, de elegantiis Latinæ linguæ by Lorenzo Valla 1442. Historia Florentini populi by Leonardo Bruni 1444, historia de duobus amantibus by Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Pope Pius II1452. De re ædificatoria by Leone Battista Alberti 1471, contra amores by Bartolomeo Platina 1479. De inventione dialectica by Rodolphus Agricola 1481, introductiones Latinæ by Antonio de Nebrija 1486. De hominis dignitate by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola 1491, nutricia by Poliziano Theologia Platonica de immortalitate animæ by Marsilio Ficino Francesco Filelfo An Analytic Bibliography of On-line Neo-Latin Titles. René Hoven, Lexique de la prose latine de la Renaissance, dictionary of Renaissance Latin from prose sources, with the collaboration of Laurent Grailet, Leiden, Brill,2006,683 p. The Centre for Neo-Latin Studies, focusing on Irish Renaissance Latin

7.
Norwegian language
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Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken mainly in Norway, where it is the official language. Along with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants. These Scandinavian languages, together with Faroese and Icelandic as well as extinct languages. Faroese and Icelandic are hardly mutually intelligible with Norwegian in their spoken form because continental Scandinavian has diverged from them, as established by law and governmental policy, the two official forms of written Norwegian are Bokmål and Nynorsk. The official Norwegian Language Council is responsible for regulating the two forms, and recommends the terms Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk in English. Two other written forms without official status also exist, one and it is regulated by the unofficial Norwegian Academy, which translates the name as Standard Norwegian. Nynorsk and Bokmål provide standards for how to write Norwegian, no standard of spoken Norwegian is officially sanctioned, and most Norwegians speak their own dialects in all circumstances. Thus, unlike in other countries, the use of any Norwegian dialect. Outside Eastern Norway, this variation is not used. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, Danish was the written language of Norway. As a result, the development of modern written Norwegian has been subject to strong controversy related to nationalism, rural versus urban discourse, historically, Bokmål is a Norwegianised variety of Danish, while Nynorsk is a language form based on Norwegian dialects and puristic opposition to Danish. The unofficial form known as Riksmål is considered more conservative than Bokmål, Norwegians are educated in both Bokmål and Nynorsk. A2005 poll indicates that 86. 3% use primarily Bokmål as their written language,5. 5% use both Bokmål and Nynorsk, and 7. 5% use primarily Nynorsk. Thus, 13% are frequently writing Nynorsk, though the majority speak dialects that resemble Nynorsk more closely than Bokmål. Broadly speaking, Nynorsk writing is widespread in western Norway, though not in major urban areas, examples are Setesdal, the western part of Telemark county and several municipalities in Hallingdal, Valdres, and Gudbrandsdalen. It is little used elsewhere, but 30–40 years ago, it also had strongholds in rural parts of Trøndelag. Today, not only is Nynorsk the official language of four of the 19 Norwegian counties, NRK, the Norwegian broadcasting corporation, broadcasts in both Bokmål and Nynorsk, and all governmental agencies are required to support both written languages. Bokmål is used in 92% of all publications, and Nynorsk in 8%

8.
Icelandic language
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Icelandic /aɪsˈlændɪk/ is a North Germanic language, the language of Iceland. It is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages, historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the colonisation of the Americas. Icelandic, Faroese, Norn, and Western Norwegian formerly constituted West Nordic, Danish, Eastern Norwegian, modern Norwegian Bokmål is influenced by both groups, leading the Nordic languages to be divided into mainland Scandinavian languages and Insular Nordic. Most Western European languages have reduced levels of inflection, particularly noun declension. In contrast, Icelandic retains a four-case synthetic grammar comparable to, Icelandic is distinguished by a wide assortment of irregular declensions. Icelandic also has many instances of oblique cases without any governing word, for example, many of the various Latin ablatives have a corresponding Icelandic dative. The vast majority of Icelandic speakers—about 320, 000—live in Iceland, more than 8,000 Icelandic speakers live in Denmark, of whom approximately 3,000 are students. The language is spoken by some 5,000 people in the United States. Notably in the province of Manitoba, while 97% of the population of Iceland consider Icelandic their mother tongue, the language is in decline in some communities outside Iceland, particularly in Canada. Icelandic speakers outside Iceland represent recent emigration in almost all cases except Gimli, Manitoba, the state-funded Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies serves as a centre for preserving the medieval Icelandic manuscripts and studying the language and its literature. Since 1995, on 16 November each year, the birthday of 19th-century poet Jónas Hallgrímsson is celebrated as Icelandic Language Day, the oldest preserved texts in Icelandic were written around 1100 AD. Much of the texts are based on poetry and laws traditionally preserved orally, the most famous of the texts, which were written in Iceland from the 12th century onward, are the Icelandic Sagas. They comprise the historical works and the eddaic poems, the language of the sagas is Old Icelandic, a western dialect of Old Norse. Danish rule of Iceland from 1380 to 1918 had little effect on the evolution of Icelandic, though more archaic than the other living Germanic languages, Icelandic changed markedly in pronunciation from the 12th to the 16th century, especially in vowels. The modern Icelandic alphabet has developed from an established in the 19th century. The later Rasmus Rask standard was a re-creation of the old treatise, with changes to fit concurrent Germanic conventions. Various archaic features, as the letter ð, had not been used much in later centuries, rasks standard constituted a major change in practice. Later 20th-century changes include the use of é instead of je, apart from the addition of new vocabulary, written Icelandic has not changed substantially since the 11th century, when the first texts were written on vellum

9.
Faroese language
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It is one of five languages descended from Old West Norse spoken in the Middle Ages, the others being Norwegian, Icelandic, and the extinct Norn and Greenlandic Norse. Around 900, the language spoken in the Faroes was Old Norse, however, many of the settlers were not from Scandinavia, but descendants of Norse settlers in the Irish Sea region. In addition, women from Norse Ireland, Orkney, or Shetland often married native Scandinavian men before settling in the Faroe Islands, as a result, the Irish language has had some influence on both Faroese and Icelandic. There is some evidence of Irish language place names in the Faroes, for example. Until the 15th century Faroese had a similar to Icelandic and Norwegian. The islanders continued to use the language in ballads, folktales and this maintained a rich spoken tradition, but for 300 years the language was not used in written form. This changed when Venceslaus Ulricus Hammershaimb and the Icelandic grammarian and politician Jón Sigurðsson published a standard for Modern Faroese in 1854. They set a standard for the orthography of the language, based on its Old Norse roots and this had the advantage of being etymologically clear, as well as keeping the kinship with the Icelandic written language. The actual pronunciation, however, often differs from the written rendering, the letter ð, for example, has no specific phoneme attached to it. Jakob Jakobsen devised a system of orthography, based on his wish for a phonetic spelling. In 1937, Faroese replaced Danish as the school language, in 1938 as the church language. However, Faroese did not become the language of media. Today Danish is considered a language, although around 5% of residents on the Faroes learn it as a first language. Old Faroese is a form of Old Norse spoken in medieval times in the Faroe Islands, the most crucial aspects of the development of Faroese are diphthongisation and palatalisation. There is not enough available to establish an accurate chronology of Faroese. Iotacism may be connected with the palatalisation of k, g and sk before Old Norse e, i, y, ø, au > /kj, ɡj, skj/ > /cç, ɟʝ, ɕcç/ > /tʃʰ, tʃ. Before the palatalisation é and ǽ merged as /ɛː/ and approximately in the same period epenthesis u is inserted into word-final /Cr/, the Great Quantity Shift operated in the 15th/16th centuries. In the case of skerping, it took place after iotacism, the shift of hv to /kw/, the deletion of /h/ in word-initial /h/–sonorant clusters, and the dissolution of þ appeared before the end of the 13th century

10.
Greenlandic language
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Greenlandic is an Eskimo–Aleut language spoken by about 57,000 Greenlandic Inuit in Greenland. It is closely related to the Inuit languages in Canada such as Inuktitut, the second variety is Tunumiit oraasiat or East Greenlandic. The Thule Inuit of Greenland, Inuktun or Polar Eskimo, is a recent arrival, Greenlandic is a polysynthetic language that allows the creation of long words by stringing together roots and suffixes. Its morphosyntactic alignment is ergative, meaning that it treats the argument of a verb like the object of a transitive verb. Nouns are inflected for one of the eight cases and for possession, verbs are inflected for one of the eight moods and for the number and person of its subject and object. Both nouns and verbs have complex derivational morphology, basic word order in transitive clauses is subject–object–verb. Subordination of clauses is done by the use of special subordinate moods, a so-called fourth-person category enables switch-reference between main clauses and subordinate clauses with different subjects. However, some linguists have suggested that Greenlandic does mark future tense obligatorily, another question is whether the language has noun incorporation, or whether the processes that create complex predicates that include nominal roots are derivational in nature. When adopting new concepts or technologies, Greenlandic usually constructs new words made from Greenlandic roots, the language has been written in the Latin script since Danish colonization began in the 1700s. The first orthography was developed by Samuel Kleinschmidt in 1851, an extensive orthographic reform undertaken in 1973 that made the script easier to learn resulted in a boost in Greenlandic literacy, which is now among the highest in the world. The Greenlandic language was brought to Greenland with the arrival of the Thule people in the 1200s and it is unknown which languages were spoken by the earlier Saqqaq and Dorset cultures in Greenland. The missionary Paul Egede wrote the first Greenlandic dictionary in 1750, from the Danish colonization in the 1700s to the beginning of Greenlandic home rule in 1979, Greenlandic experienced increasing pressure from the Danish language. In the 1950s, Denmarks linguistic policies were directed at replacing Greenlandic with Danish, of primary significance was that post-primary education and official functions were conducted in Danish. From 1851 to 1973, Greenlandic was written in a complicated orthography devised by the missionary linguist Samuel Kleinschmidt, in 1973, a new orthography was introduced, intended to bring the written language closer to the spoken standard, which had changed considerably since Kleinschmidts time. The reform was effective and in the following it, Greenlandic literacy received a boost. Another development that strengthened the Greenlandic language has been the policy of greenlandization of Greenlandic society which began with the agreement of 1979. This policy has worked to reverse the trend towards marginalization of the Greenlandic language by making it the official language of education. Today Greenlandic has several dedicated news media, the Greenlandic National Radio, Kalaallit Nunaata Radioa, before June 2009, Greenlandic shared its status as the official language in Greenland with Danish

11.
Lutheranism
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Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestant Christianity which identifies with the theology of Martin Luther, a German friar, ecclesiastical reformer and theologian. Luthers efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched the Protestant Reformation in the German-speaking territories of the Holy Roman Empire. Lutheranism advocates a doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone on the basis of Scripture alone and this is in contrast to the belief of the Catholic Church, defined at the Council of Trent, concerning authority coming from both the Scriptures and Tradition. In addition, Lutheranism accepts the teachings of the first seven ecumenical councils of the undivided Christian Church, unlike Calvinism, Lutherans retain many of the liturgical practices and sacramental teachings of the pre-Reformation Church, with a particular emphasis on the Eucharist, or Lords Supper. Lutheran theology differs from Reformed theology in Christology, the purpose of Gods Law, the grace, the concept of perseverance of the saints. Today, Lutheranism is one of the largest denominations of Protestantism, with approximately 80 million adherents, it constitutes the third most common Protestant denomination after historically Pentecostal denominations and Anglicanism. The Lutheran World Federation, the largest communion of Lutheran churches, Other Lutheran organizations include the International Lutheran Council and the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference, as well as independent churches. The name Lutheran originated as a term used against Luther by German Scholastic theologian Dr. Johann Maier von Eck during the Leipzig Debate in July 1519. Eck and other Catholics followed the practice of naming a heresy after its leader. Martin Luther always disliked the term Lutheran, preferring the term Evangelical, which was derived from euangelion, the followers of John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, and other theologians linked to the Reformed tradition also began to use that term. To distinguish the two groups, others began to refer to the two groups as Evangelical Lutheran and Evangelical Reformed. As time passed by, the word Evangelical was dropped, Lutherans themselves began to use the term Lutheran in the middle of the 16th century, in order to distinguish themselves from other groups such as the Philippists and Calvinists. In 1597, theologians in Wittenberg defined the title Lutheran as referring to the true church, Lutheranism has its roots in the work of Martin Luther, who sought to reform the Western Church to what he considered a more biblical foundation. Lutheranism spread through all of Scandinavia during the 16th century, as the monarch of Denmark–Norway, through Baltic-German and Swedish rule, Lutheranism also spread into Estonia and Latvia. Since 1520, regular Lutheran services have been held in Copenhagen, under the reign of Frederick I, Denmark-Norway remained officially Catholic. Although Frederick initially pledged to persecute Lutherans, he adopted a policy of protecting Lutheran preachers and reformers. During Fredericks reign, Lutheranism made significant inroads in Denmark, at an open meeting in Copenhagen attended by the king in 1536, the people shouted, We will stand by the holy Gospel, and do not want such bishops anymore. Fredericks son Christian was openly Lutheran, which prevented his election to the throne upon his fathers death, however, following his victory in the civil war that followed, in 1537 he became Christian III and advanced the Reformation in Denmark-Norway

12.
Monarchy
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The actual power of the monarch may vary from purely symbolic, to partial and restricted, to completely autocratic. Traditionally and in most cases, the monarchs post is inherited and lasts until death or abdication, occasionally this might create a situation of rival claimants whose legitimacy is subject to effective election. Finally, there have been cases where the term of a reign is either fixed in years or continues until certain goals are achieved. Thus there are widely divergent structures and traditions defining monarchy, Monarchy was the most common form of government until the 19th century, but it is no longer prevalent. Currently,47 sovereign nations in the world have monarchs acting as heads of state,19 of which are Commonwealth realms that recognise Queen Elizabeth II as their head of state. The monarchs of Cambodia, Japan, and Malaysia reign, the word monarch comes from the Greek language word μονάρχης, monárkhēs which referred to a single, at least nominally absolute ruler. In current usage the word usually refers to a traditional system of hereditary rule. Depending on the held by the monarch, a monarchy may be known as a kingdom, principality, duchy, grand duchy, empire, tsardom, emirate, sultanate, khaganate. The form of societal hierarchy known as chiefdom or tribal kingship is prehistoric, the Greek term monarchia is classical, used by Herodotus. The monarch in classical antiquity is often identified as king, the Chinese, Japanese and Nepalese monarchs continued to be considered living Gods into the modern period. Since antiquity, monarchy has contrasted with forms of democracy, where power is wielded by assemblies of free citizens. In antiquity, monarchies were abolished in favour of such assemblies in Rome, much of 19th century politics was characterised by the division between anti-monarchist Radicalism and monarchist Conservativism. Many countries abolished the monarchy in the 20th century and became republics, advocacy of republics is called republicanism, while advocacy of monarchies is called monarchism. In the modern era, monarchies are more prevalent in small states than in large ones, most monarchs, both historically and in the modern day, have been born and brought up within a royal family, the centre of the royal household and court. Growing up in a family, future monarchs are often trained for the responsibilities of expected future rule. Different systems of succession have been used, such as proximity of blood, primogeniture, and agnatic seniority. While most monarchs have been male, many female monarchs also have reigned in history, rule may be hereditary in practice without being considered a monarchy, such as that of family dictatorships or political families in many democracies. The principal advantage of hereditary monarchy is the continuity of leadership

13.
Elective monarchy
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An elective monarchy is a monarchy ruled by an elected monarch, in contrast to a hereditary monarchy in which the office is automatically passed down as a family inheritance. The manner of election, the nature of candidate qualifications, historically it is not uncommon for elective monarchies to transform into hereditary ones over time, or for hereditary ones to acquire at least occasional elective aspects. Many, if not most, kingdoms were officially elective historically, the kings of Macedon and of Epirus were elected by the army, which was similar in composition to the ecclesia of democracies, the council of all free citizens. Military service often was linked with citizenship among the members of the royal house. In the ancient Kingdom of Rome, the kings were elected by the Assemblies, therefore, the office of Roman and Byzantine emperor remained vaguely elective and heredity never was, and could never be, formally established in law. The Holy Roman Empire is perhaps the best-known example of an elective monarchy, however, from 1453 to 1740, a Habsburg was always elected emperor, the throne becoming unofficially hereditary. During that period, the emperor was elected from within the House of Habsburg by a council of nobles called prince-electors. The secular electoral seats were hereditary, however, spiritual electors were usually elected by the cathedral chapters as religious leaders, but simultaneously ruled as monarch of a territory of imperial immediacy. Thus the prince-bishoprics were elective monarchies too, the same holds true for prince-abbeys, whose prince-abbesses or prince-abbots were elected by a college of clerics and imperially appointed as princely rulers in a pertaining territory. In the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, the kingship was partially elected, during the height of the kingdom in the mid-12th century there was a royal family and a relatively clear line of succession. Nevertheless, the king was elected, or at least recognized, here the king was considered a primus inter pares, and in his absence his duties were performed by his seneschal. Originally, the Kings of Sweden were elected by all men at the Mora Thing. Elective monarchy continued until 1544, when the Riksdag of the Estates designated the heirs of King Gustav Vasa as the heirs to the throne, the Danish monarchy was also officially elective, although the eldest son of the reigning monarch was usually elected. This continued until 1660, when a hereditary and absolute monarchy was instituted by Frederick III, though the monarchy of Norway was originally hereditary, it too became elective in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Candidates had to be of royal blood, but the kingship was elected by a council of noblemen, in 1905 Prince Carl was elected King of Norway, after the male population in an election decided Norway should still be a monarchy. Bernadotte eventually ascended the throne as Charles XIV John of Sweden, in Poland, after the death of the last Piast in 1370, Polish kings were initially elected by a small council, gradually, this privilege was granted to all members of the szlachta. During the election period, the function of the king was performed by an interrex and this unique Polish election was termed the free election. Since medieval times, the King of Bohemia was elected by the Estates of Lands of the Bohemian Crown, since 1526, when the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I assumed the Bohemian Crown, it was always held by the Habsburgs, who expected this situation to go on indefinitely

14.
Absolute monarchy
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Absolute monarchy, or despotic monarchy, is a form of monarchy in which one ruler has supreme authority that is not restricted by any written laws, legislature, or customs. These are often, but not always, hereditary monarchies, in contrast, in constitutional monarchies, the head of states authority derives from and is legally bounded or restricted by a constitution or legislature. Some monarchies have weak or symbolic legislatures and other bodies that the monarch can alter or dissolve at will. Countries where a monarch still maintains absolute power are Brunei, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, the individual emirates composing the United Arab Emirates, Swaziland, in Ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh wielded absolute power over the country and was considered a living god by his people. In ancient Mesopotamia, many rulers of Assyria, Babylonia and Sumer were absolute monarchs as well, in ancient and medieval India, rulers of the Maurya, Satahavana, Gupta and Chalukya Empires, as well as other major and minor empires, were considered absolute monarchs. In the Khmer Empire, the kings were called Devaraja and Chakravartin, in Kingdom of Siam, the kings were esestablished Somburanaya-sittiraj. Throughout Chinese history, many emperors and one empress wielded absolute power through the Mandate of Heaven, in pre-Columbian America, the Inca Empire was ruled by a Sapa Inca, who was considered the son of Inti, the sun god and absolute ruler over the people and nation. Throughout much of European history, the right of kings was the theological justification for absolute monarchy. Many European monarchs, such as those of Russia, claimed supreme autocratic power by right. James VI of Scotland and his son Charles I of Scotland and England tried to import this principle, there is a considerable variety of opinion by historians on the extent of absolutism among European monarchs. Some, such as Perry Anderson, argue that quite a few monarchs achieved levels of absolutist control over their states, a widely held story about Louis XIV of France is that he proclaimed Létat, cest moi. What Louis did say was, The interests of the state come first, when one gives these priority, one labors for ones own good. These advantages to the state redounds to ones glory, although often criticized for his extravagances, such as the Palace of Versailles, he reigned over France for a long period, and some historians consider him a successful absolute monarch. More recently, revisionist historians have questioned whether Louis reign should be considered absolute, the King of France concentrated in his person legislative, executive, and judicial powers. He was the judicial authority. He could condemn men to death without the right of appeal and it was both his duty to punish offenses and stop them from being committed. From his judicial authority followed his power both to make laws and to annul them and this law consequently authorized the king to abolish all other centers of power. Most important was the abolition of the Council of the Realm and his actions largely originated the militaristic streak of the Hohenzollern

15.
Frederick I of Denmark
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Frederick I was the King of Denmark and Norway. His name is also spelled Friedrich in German, Frederik in Danish and Norwegian and he was the penultimate Roman Catholic monarch to reign over Denmark, when subsequent monarchs embraced Lutheranism after the Protestant Reformation. As King of Norway, Frederick is most remarkable in never having visited the country and was never being crowned King of Norway, therefore he was styled King of Denmark, the Vends and the Goths, elected King of Norway. Frederick was the son of the first Oldenburg King Christian I of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Soon after the death of his father, the underage Frederick was elected co-Duke of Schleswig and Holstein in 1482, in 1490 at Fredericks majority, both duchies were divided between the brothers. In 1500 he had convinced his brother King John to conquer Dithmarschen, a great army was called from not only the duchies, but with additions from all of the Kalmar Union for which his brother briefly was king. In addition, numerous German mercenaries took part, the expedition failed miserably, however, in the Battle of Hemmingstedt, where one third of all knights of Schleswig and Holstein lost their lives. In 1523 Christian II, King of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, was forced by disloyal nobles to abdicate and it is not certain that Frederick ever learned to speak Danish. After becoming king, he continued spending most of his time at Gottorp, in 1524 and 1525 Frederick had to suppress revolts among the peasants in Jutland and Scania who demanded the restoration of Christian II. The high point of the came in 1525 when Søren Norby. He raised 8000 men who besieged Kärnan, a castle in Helsingborg, Fredericks general, Johann Rantzau, moved his army to Scania and defeated the peasants soundly in April and May 1525. Frederick played a role in the spread of Lutheran teaching throughout Denmark. In his coronation charter, he was made the protector of Roman Catholicism in Denmark. In that role, he asserted his right to select bishops for the Roman Catholic dioceses in the country, Christian II had been intolerant of Protestant teaching, but Frederick took a more opportunist approach. For example, he ordered that Lutherans and Roman Catholics share the same churches, in 1526, when Lutheran Reformer Hans Tausen was threatened with arrest and trial for heresy, Frederick appointed him his personal chaplain to give him immunity. Starting in 1527, Frederick authorized the closure of Franciscan houses and monasteries in 28 Danish cities, during his reign, Frederick was skillful enough to prevent all-out warfare between Protestants and Roman Catholics. In 1532 he succeeded in capturing Christian II who had tried to make a political come-back in Norway, Frederick died on 10 April 1533 in Gottorp, at the age of 61, and was buried in Schleswig Cathedral. Upon Fredericks death, tensions between Roman Catholics and Protestants rose to a pitch which would result in the Counts Feud

16.
Christian IV of Denmark
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Christian IV, sometimes colloquially referred to as Christian Firtal in Denmark and Christian Kvart or Quart in Norway, was king of Denmark-Norway and Duke of Holstein and Schleswig from 1588 to 1648. His 59-year reign is the longest of Danish monarchs, and of Scandinavian monarchies, a member of the house of Oldenburg, Christian began his personal rule of Denmark in 1596 at the age of 19. He is frequently remembered as one of the most popular, ambitious, Christian IV obtained for his kingdom a level of stability and wealth that was virtually unmatched elsewhere in Europe. He engaged Denmark in numerous wars, most notably the Thirty Years War, which devastated much of Germany, undermined the Danish economy and he renamed the Norwegian capital Oslo as Christiania after himself, a name used until 1925. Christian was born at Frederiksborg Castle in Denmark on 12 April 1577 as the child and eldest son of King Frederick II of Denmark–Norway. He was descended, through his mothers side, from king John of Denmark, at the time, Denmark was still an elective monarchy, so in spite of being the eldest son Christian was not automatically heir to the throne. However, in 1580, at the age of 3, his father had him elected Prince-Elect, at the death of his father on 4 April 1588, Christian was 11 years old. He succeeded to the throne, but as he was still under-age a regency council was set up to serve as the trustees of the power while Christian was still growing up. It was led by chancellor Niels Kaas and consisted of the Rigsraadet council members Peder Munk, Jørgen Ottesen Rosenkrantz and his mother Queen Dowager Sophie,30 years old, had wished to play a role in the government, but was denied by the Council. At the death of Niels Kaas in 1594, Jørgen Rosenkrantz took over leadership of the regency council, Christian continued his studies at Sorø Academy and received a good education with a reputation as a headstrong and talented student. In 1595, the Council of the Realm decided that Christian would soon be old enough to assume control of the reins of government. On 17 August 1596, at the age of 19, Christian signed his haandfæstning, twelve days later, on 29 August 1596, Christian IV was crowned at the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen by the Bishop of Zealand, Peder Jensen Vinstrup. He was crowned with a new Danish Crown Regalia which had made for him by Dirich Fyring. On 30 November 1597, he married Anne Catherine of Brandenburg, Christian took an interest in many and varied matters, including a series of domestic reforms and improving Danish national armaments. New fortresses were constructed under the direction of Dutch engineers, the Danish navy, which in 1596 had consisted of but twenty-two vessels, in 1610 rose to sixty, some of them built after Christians own designs. The formation of a national army proved more difficult, up until the early 1620s, Denmarks economy profited from general boom conditions in Europe. This inspired Christian to initiate a policy of expanding Denmarks overseas trade and he founded a number of merchant cities, and supported the building of factories. He also built a number of buildings in Dutch Renaissance style

17.
Frederick III of Denmark
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Frederick III was king of Denmark and Norway from 1648 until his death. He also governed under the name Frederick II as diocesan administrator of the Prince-Bishopric of Verden, and he instituted absolute monarchy in Denmark-Norway in 1660, confirmed by law in 1665 as the first in Western historiography. He also ordered the creation of the Throne Chair of Denmark and he was born the second-eldest son of Christian IV and Anne Catherine of Brandenburg. Frederick was only considered an heir to the throne after the death of his older brother Prince Christian in 1647, in order to be elected king after the death of his father, Frederick conceded significant influence to the nobility. As king, he fought two wars against Sweden and he was defeated in the Dano-Swedish War of 1657–1658, but attained great popularity when he weathered the 1659 Assault on Copenhagen and won the Dano-Swedish War of 1658–1660. Later that year, Frederick used his popularity to disband the elective monarchy in favour of absolute monarchy and he married Sophie Amalie of Brunswick-Lüneburg, with whom he fathered Christian V of Denmark. Frederick was born at Haderslev in Slesvig, the son of Christian IV, in his youth and early manhood, there was no prospect of his ascending the Danish throne, as his older brother Christian was elected heir apparent in 1608. Frederick was educated at Sorø Academy and studied in the Netherlands, as a young man, he demonstrated an interest in theology, natural sciences, and Scandinavian history. He was a reserved and enigmatic prince who seldom laughed, spoke little, and wrote less, even though he lacked the impulsive and jovial qualities of his father, Frederick possessed the compensating virtues of moderation and self-control. On 1 October 1643 Frederick wed Sophie Amalie of Brunswick-Lüneburg, the daughter of George, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, who had an energetic, passionate and he was an enthusiastic collector of books and his collection became the foundation for the Copenhagen Royal Library. In his youth, Frederick became the instrument of his fathers political schemes in the Holy Roman Empire and he was granted administration of the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen, the Prince-Bishopric of Verden, and named coadjutor of the Bishopric of Halberstadt. Thus, from an age, he had considerable experience as an administrator. At the age of eighteen, he was the commandant of the Bremian fortress of Stade. During the Torstenson War of 1643–45, Frederick lost control of his possessions within the empire and he was then appointed commander in the royal shares in the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein by his father. His command was not successful, chiefly owing to his quarrels with the Earl-Marshal Anders Bille and this was Fredericks first collision with the Danish nobility, who afterwards regarded him with extreme distrust. The death of his elder brother Christian in June 1647 opened the possibility for Frederick to be elected heir apparent to the Danish throne, however, this issue was still unsettled when Christian IV died on 28 February 1648. After long deliberation among the Danish Estates and in the Rigsraadet, on 6 July, Frederick received the homage of his subjects, and he was crowned on 23 November. The Haandfæstning included provisions curtailing the already diminished royal prerogative in favour of increased influence for the Rigsraadet, in the first years of his reign, the Rigsraadet was the main power center of Danish politics

18.
Frederick VI of Denmark
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Frederick VI was King of Denmark from 13 March 1808 to 3 December 1839 and King of Norway from 13 March 1808 to 7 February 1814. From 1784 until his accession, he served as regent during his fathers illness and was referred to as the Crown Prince Regent. For his motto he chose God and the just cause and since the time of his reign, Frederick was born at Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen. Frederick belonged to the House of Oldenburg and his parents were King Christian VII and Caroline Matilda of Great Britain. He was born after 15 months of marriage, just a day before his fathers 19th birthday, as the eldest son of the ruling king, he automatically became crown prince at birth. On 30 January of the year, he was baptised at Christiansborg Palace by Ludvig Harboe. His godparents were King Christian VII, the dowager queen Juliana Maria and his half-uncle, from 1770 to 1772, Struensee was de facto regent and lover of Caroline Matilda, Fredericks mother. Both were ideologically influenced by Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire and Jean Jacques Rousseau, while Struensee was in power, young Frederick was raised at Hirschholm Palace following the educational approach advocated by Rousseau in his famous work Émile. Instead of receiving direct instruction, Frederick was expected to learn everything through his own efforts through playing with two boys as per Struensees instructions. On 8 January 1772, after the revolt against Struensee, Fredericks 18-year-old half-uncle Hereditary Prince Frederick was made regent, the real power, however, was held by Hereditary Prince Fredericks mother, Queen Dowager Juliana Maria, aided by Ove Høegh-Guldberg. It is said that during the coup, he engaged in a fistfight with his half-uncle over the regency and he continued as regent of Denmark under his fathers name until the latters death in 1808. During the regency, Frederick instituted widespread liberal reforms with the assistance of Chief Minister Andreas Peter Bernstorff, crises encountered during his reign include disagreement with the British over neutral shipping. This resulted in two British attacks on Copenhagen, the Battle of Copenhagen of 1801 and the Battle of Copenhagen of 1807, the conflict continued in the Gunboat War between Denmark-Norway and the United Kingdom, which lasted until the Treaty of Kiel in 1814. There was speculation that he was to marry a Prussian princess and they married in Gottorp on 31 July 1790 and had eight children. Their eldest daughter, Princess Caroline married her father’s first cousin, Ferdinand, the youngest, Princess Wilhelmine, became the wife of the future Frederick VII of Denmark. None of Frederick VIs sons survived infancy and when he died, he was succeeded by his cousin Christian VIII of Denmark, Frederick became King of Denmark on 13 March 1808. When the throne of Sweden seemed likely to become vacant in 1809, however, Fredericks brother-in-law, Prince Christian Augustus of Augustenborg, was first elected to the throne of Sweden, followed by the French Marshal Bernadotte. During the Napoleonic Wars, he tried to maintain Danish neutrality, however after the British bombardment of Copenhagen, after the French defeat in Russia in 1812, the Allies again asked him to change sides but he refused

19.
Early modern Europe
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Early modern Europe is the period of European history between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, roughly the late 15th century to the late 18th century. The early modern period was characterized by changes in many realms of human endeavor. Capitalist economies began to develop in a nascent form, first in the northern Italian republics such as Genoa and Venice and in the cities of the Low Countries, later in France, Germany and England. The early modern period saw the rise and dominance of the economic theory of mercantilism. As such, the modern period is often associated with the decline and eventual disappearance of feudalism. The Protestant Reformation greatly altered the balance of Christendom, creating a formidable new opposition to the dominance of the Catholic Church. The early modern period also witnessed the circumnavigation of the Earth, the beginning of the early modern period is not clear-cut, but is generally accepted to be in the late 15th century or early 16th century. Movable type, which allowed characters to be arranged to form words. 1453 The conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans signalled the end of the Byzantine empire,1494 French king Charles VIII invaded Italy, drastically altering the status quo and beginning a series of wars which would punctuate the Italian Renaissance. 1513 First formulation of modern politics with the publication of Machiavellis The Prince,1517 The Reformation begins with Martin Luther nailing his ninety-five theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany. 1526 Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor gains the crowns of Bohemia,1545 The Council of Trent marks the end of the medieval Roman Catholic Church. The role of nobles in the Feudal System had yielded to the notion of the Divine Right of Kings during the Middle Ages, among the most notable political changes included the abolition of serfdom and the crystallization of kingdoms into nation-states. Perhaps even more significantly, with the advent of the Reformation, many kings and rulers used this radical shift in the understanding of the world to further consolidate their sovereignty over their territories. For instance, many of the Germanic states converted to Protestantism in an attempt to out of the grasp of the Pope. The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century movement to reform the Catholic Church in Europe, in November he mailed them to various religious authorities of the day. The Reformation ended in division and the establishment of new church movements, the four most important traditions to emerge directly from the Reformation were Lutheranism, the Reformed tradition, Anglicanism, and the Anabaptists. Subsequent Protestant churches generally trace their roots back to these four schools of the Reformation. This period refers to England 1558–1603, the Elizabethan Era is the period associated with the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and is often considered a golden age in English history

20.
Gustav I of Sweden
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Initially of low standing, Gustav rose to lead the rebel movement following the Stockholm Bloodbath, in which his father perished. As King, Gustav proved an administrator with a ruthless streak not inferior to his predecessors. He worked to raise taxes, end Feudalism and bring about a Swedish Reformation, replacing the prerogatives of local landowners, noblemen and clergy with centrally appointed governors and bishops. Due to a vibrant dynastic succession, his three sons, Erik, Johan and Karl IX, all held the kingship at different points, Gustav I has subsequently been labelled the founder of modern Sweden, and the father of the nation. Gustav liked to compare himself to Moses, whom he believed to have liberated his people. As a person, Gustav was known for ruthless methods and a bad temper and he founded one of the now oldest orchestras of the world, the Kungliga Hovkapellet. Royal housekeeping accounts from 1526 mention twelve musicians including wind players, today the Kungliga Hovkapellet is the orchestra of the Royal Swedish Opera. Gustav Eriksson, a son of Cecilia Månsdotter Eka and Erik Johansson Vasa, was born in 1496. The birth most likely place in Rydboholm Castle, northeast of Stockholm. The newborn got his name, Gustav, from Eriks grandfather Gustav Anundsson, Erik Johanssons parents were Johan Kristersson and Birgitta Gustafsdotter of the dynasties Vasa and Sture respectively, both dynasties of high nobility. Birgitta Gustafsdotter was the sister of Sten Sture the Elder, regent of Sweden, being a relative and ally of uncle Sten Sture, Erik inherited the regents estates in Uppland and Södermanland when the latter died in 1503. Although a member of a family with considerable properties since childhood, according to genealogical research, Birgitta Gustafsdotter and Sten Sture were descended from King Sverker II of Sweden, through King Sverkers granddaughter Benedikte Sunesdotter. One of King Gustavs great-grandmothers was a half-sister of King Charles VIII of Sweden, since the end of the 14th century, Sweden had been a part of the Kalmar Union with Denmark and Norway. The Danish dominance in this union led to uprisings in Sweden. During Gustavs childhood, parts of the Swedish nobility tried to make Sweden independent, Gustav and his father Erik supported the party of Sten Sture the Younger, regent of Sweden from 1512, and its struggle against the Danish King Christian II. Following the battle of Brännkyrka in 1518, where Sten Stures troops beat the Danish forces, it was decided that Sten Sture and King Christian would meet in Österhaninge for negotiations. To guarantee the safety of the king, the Swedish side sent six men as hostages to be kept by the Danes for as long as the negotiations lasted. However, Christian did not show up for the negotiations, violated the deal with the Swedish side, the six members of the kidnapped hostage were Hemming Gadh, Lars Siggesson, Jöran Siggesson, Olof Ryning, Bengt Nilsson – and Gustav Eriksson

21.
Kalmar Union
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The Union was not quite continuous, there were several short interruptions. Legally the countries remained separate sovereign states, but with their domestic, one main impetus for its formation was to block German expansion northward into the Baltic region. The main reason for its failure to survive was the struggle between the monarch, who wanted a strong unified state, and the Swedish and Danish nobility which did not. Diverging interests gave rise to a conflict that would hamper the union in several intervals from the 1430s until its breakup in 1523 when Gustav Vasa became king of Sweden. Norway continued to remain a part of the realm of Denmark–Norway under the Oldenburg dynasty for nearly three centuries until its dissolution in 1814. Then Union between Sweden and Norway lasted until 1905, when a grandson of the incumbent king of Denmark was elected its king, the union was the work of Scandinavian aristocracy wishing to counter the influence of the Hanseatic League. Margaret, a daughter of King Valdemar IV of Denmark, married King Haakon VI of Norway and Sweden, Margaret succeeded in having her son Olav recognized as heir to the throne of Denmark. In 1376 Olav inherited the crown of Denmark from his grandfather as King Oluf III, with his mother as guardian. The two kingdoms were united in a union under a child king, with the kings mother as his guardian, later. On 2 February the next year, she was recognized as regent of Norway. Their common enemy was the Hanseatic League and the growing German influence over the Scandinavian economy. The Nordic union was established on 17 June 1397 by the Treaty of Kalmar, signed in the Swedish castle of Kalmar on Swedens south-east coast, at each junction, installation of a new monarch tended to mean a break-up of the union for a while. Eric of Pomerania, however, became the monarch of all three kingdoms, at Kalmar, the 15-year-old Eric of Pomerania was crowned king of all three kingdoms by the archbishops of Denmark and Sweden, but Margaret managed to remain in control until her death in 1412. It is said that contemporaries of the Union would not recognize the term, Union of Kalmar—that they just understood that much of the time. While the term meaning Treaty of Kalmar was known already at the time, the Swedes were not happy with the Danes frequent wars on Schleswig, Holstein, Mecklenburg, and Pomerania, which were a disturbance to Swedish exports to the European continent. Furthermore, the centralization of government in Denmark raised suspicions, the Swedish Privy Council wanted to retain a fair degree of self-government. The unity of the union eroded after the Danish defeat against the German Hanseatic League in the 1430s, even to the point of armed rebellion, erik was deposed as the union king and was succeeded by his nephew, the childless Christopher of Bavaria. In the power vacuum that arose following Christophers death, Sweden elected Charles VIII king with the intent to reestablish the union under a Swedish king, during the next seven decades struggle for power and the wars between Sweden and Denmark would dominate the union

22.
Danish rigsdaler
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The rigsdaler was the name of several currencies used in Denmark until 1875. The similarly named Reichsthaler, riksdaler and rijksdaalder were used in Germany and Austria-Hungary, Sweden and these currencies were often anglicized as rix-dollar or rixdollar. The Danish currency system established in 1625 consisted of 12 penning =1 skilling,16 skilling =1 mark,6 mark =1 rigsdaler and 8 mark =1 krone. From 1713, two separate systems coexisted, courant and species, with courant being a debased currency also used for banknote issue, the rigsdaler species contained 4⁄37 of a Cologne mark of fine silver. In 1813, following a crisis, a new currency system was introduced, based on the rigsbankdaler. For six rigsdaler in old banknotes, a new one rigsbankdaler note was exchanged, the rigsbankdaler This was divided into 96 rigsbank skilling and was equal to half a rigsdaler species or 6 rigsdaler courant. A further change was made in 1854, the rigsdaler species name disappeared and the names rigsbankdaler and rigsbank skilling became rigsdaler and skilling rigsmønt. Thus, there were 96 skilling rigsmønt to the rigsdaler, in 1873, Denmark and Sweden formed the Scandinavian Monetary Union and the rigsdaler was replaced by the Danish krone on 1 January 1875. An equal valued krone/krona of the union replaced the three currencies at the rate of 1 krone/krona = 1⁄2 Danish rigsdaler = 1⁄4 Norwegian speciedaler =1 Swedish riksdaler. Because of this reform, where two Danish kroner was then of equal worth to the Danish daler, the coins got the common name of daler as they were functionally the same. This has however, become an uncommon name as a result of a gap in the tokrone coins existence from 1959 to 1993. In the late 18th century, coins were issued in denominations of 1⁄2,1,2,4,8,24 and 32 skilling, 1⁄15, 1⁄4, 1⁄3, 1⁄2 and 1 rigsdaler specie. Between 1813 and 1815, copper coins bearing the legend rigsbanktegn were issued in denominations of 2,3,4,6,12 and 16 skilling, from 1818,1,2 and 32 rigsbank skilling coins were issued, with 1 rigsdaler species from 1820. From 1826, gold coins were issued denominated in Frederiks dOr or Christians dOr, the dor was nominally worth 10 rigsdaler, although the currency was on a silver standard. In 1838, 1⁄2 rigsbank skilling coins were introduced, between 1840 and 1843, a new coinage was introduced, consisting of 1⁄5, 1⁄2,1,2,3,4,8,16 and 32 rigsbank skilling,1 rigsbankdaler and 1 rigsdaler species. These denominations were 1 1⁄4, 2 1⁄2,5,10 and 30 Schilling Courant, the renaming of the currency units in 1854 lead to the issuing of coins for 1⁄2,1,4 and 16 skilling rigsmønt,1 and 2 rigsdaler. Gold dor coins continued to be issued, in 1713, the government introduced notes for 1,2 and 3 mark,1,5,10,25,50 and 100 rigsdaler. The Copenhagen Assignation, Exchange and Loans Bank issued notes between 1737 and 1804 for 10,20,30,40,50 and 100 rigsdaler courant

23.
Norwegian rigsdaler
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The rigsdaler was the unit of currency used in Norway until 1816 and in Denmark until 1873. The similarly named Reichsthaler, riksdaler and rijksdaalder were used in Germany and Austria-Hungary, Sweden, during the political union between Denmark and Norway, Danish currency circulated alongside Norwegian. In 1816, following the establishment of the union between Sweden and Norway, the rigsdaler specie was renamed the speciedaler and became the unit of currency in Norway. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, coins were issued in denominations of 1,2,4,8 and 24 skilling, 1⁄15, 1⁄5, 1⁄3, 1⁄2, 2⁄3 and 1 rigsdaler specie. In 1695, government notes were issued for 10,20,25,50 and 100 rigsdaler, in 1807, notes were reintroduced by the government, in denominations of 1,5,10 and 100 rigsdaler courant, with 12 skilling notes added in 1810. In 1813, Rigsbankens Norske Avdeling began issuing notes, in denominations of 1,5,50, and 100 Rigsbankdaler. Subsequent series were issued by Norges Midlertidige Rigsbank, Stattholderbevis, and Norges Bank

24.
Denmark
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The term Danish Realm refers to the relationship between Denmark proper, the Faroe Islands and Greenland—three countries constituting the Kingdom of Denmark. The legal nature of the Kingdom of Denmark is fundamentally one of a sovereign state. The Faroe Islands and Greenland have been part of the Crown of Denmark since 1397 when the Kalmar Union was ratified, legal matters in The Danish Realm are subject to the Danish Constitution. Beginning in 1953, state law issues within The Danish Realm has been governed by The Unity of the Realm, a less formal name for The Unity of the Realm is the Commonwealth of the Realm. In 1978, The Unity of The Realm was for the first time referred to as rigsfællesskabet. The name caught on and since the 1990s, both The Unity of The Realm and The Danish Realm itself has increasingly been referred to as simply rigsfællesskabet in daily parlance. The Danish Constitution stipulates that the foreign and security interests for all parts of the Danish Realm are the responsibility of the Danish government, the Faroes received home rule in 1948 and Greenland did so in 1979. In 2005, the Faroes received a self-government arrangement, and in 2009 Greenland received self rule, the Danish Realms unique state of internal affairs is acted out in the principle of The Unity of the Realm. This principle is derived from Article 1 of the Danish Constitution which specifies that constitutional law applies equally to all areas of the Danish Realm, the Constitutional Act specifies that sovereignty is to continue to be exclusively with the authorities of the Realm. The language of Denmark is Danish, and the Danish state authorities are based in Denmark, the Kingdom of Denmarks parliament, with its 179 members, is located in the capital, Copenhagen. Two of the members are elected in each of Greenland and the Faroe Islands. The Government ministries are located in Copenhagen, as is the highest court, in principle, the Danish Realm constitutes a unified sovereign state, with equal status between its constituent parts. Devolution differs from federalism in that the powers of the subnational authority ultimately reside in central government. The Self-Government Arrangements devolves political competence and responsibility from the Danish political authorities to the Faroese, the Faroese and Greenlandic authorities administer the tasks taken over from the state, enact legislation in these specific fields and have the economic responsibility for solving these tasks. The Danish government provides a grant to the Faroese and the Greenlandic authorities to cover the costs of these devolved areas. The 1948 Home Rule Act of the Faroe Islands sets out the terms of Faroese home rule, the Act states. the Faroe Islands shall constitute a self-governing community within the State of Denmark. It establishes the government of the Faroe Islands and the Faroese parliament. The Faroe Islands were previously administered as a Danish county, the Home Rule Act abolished the post of Amtmand and these powers were expanded in a 2005 Act, which named the Faroese home government as an equal partner with the Danish government

25.
Kingdom of Norway (1814)
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1814 was a pivotal year in the history of the Kingdom of Norway. It started with Norway in a union with Denmark, subject to a blockade by The British Empire. In May a constitutional convention declared Norway independent, by the end of the year the Norwegian parliament had agreed to join with Sweden in a personal union under the monarch of Sweden. Although nationalist aspirations were not to be realized until the events of 1905,1814 was the crisis. The year contains the story of one king and two future kings in Scandinavia who may have hoped to unite Sweden, Denmark. The Norwegian people and their leaders were caught in the middle of this rivalry, denmark–Norway had become entangled on the French side in the Napoleonic War through its participation in the Gunboat War. Having lost its fleet, it was virtually defenceless as the tides turned against France, the British Royal Navy had blocked all Norwegian ports effectively from 1808, thus breaking many bonds to Denmark, and leaving Norway to itself. Under those conditions, tension grew in Norway, and an independence movement was formed in 1809. The Swedish campaign against Norway in 1808-09 had been repulsed by the Norwegian army, the years of 1812 and 1813 were known for severe famine due to the blockade, and the hardships were long remembered in Norway. In addition, he was to join the allied powers in their fight against Napoleon, secret correspondence from the British government in the preceding days had put pressure on the negotiating parties to reach an agreement to avoid a full-scale invasion of Denmark. The letter instructed him to deliver the Norwegian fortresses to Swedish forces, the public were informed of the peace treaty on 26 January through a censored article in the newspaper Tiden, under the headline. It did not clearly convey the fact that the king had ceded his kingdom to the king of Sweden, historically the enemy of Norway. As there was the annual February market in Christiania at the time, a local priest observed that the entire marketplace swirled with rumours of the treaty. As news spread, it was apparent to many Norwegian intellectuals that the people were offended by the treaty, the King had been informed of these plans in a secret letter of December 1813. The Prince had also instructed to keep the union with Denmark intact. In Norway, the sentiment was that Norway had been out to Sweden. These so-called Prince notes were necessary to keep the wheels of government turning, but they contributed to the already chaotic monetary situation, the cause of the financial crisis was the refusal of King Frederick VI to establish a Bank of Norway. Christian Frederick decided to claim the throne of Norway as rightful heir, the week prior to January 30, the prince toured parts of Norway and found the same real or false willingness to fight everywhere he came

26.
Faroe Islands
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The Faroe Islands, also spelled the Faeroes, is an archipelago between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic, about halfway between Norway and Iceland,320 kilometres north-northwest of Scotland. Its area is about 1,400 square kilometres with a population of 49,188 in 2016, the Faeroe Islands is an autonomous country within the Danish Realm. The land of the Faeroes is rugged, and these islands have an oceanic climate, windy, wet, cloudy. Despite this island groups northerly latitude, temperatures average above freezing throughout the year because of the Gulf Stream, between 1035 and 1814, the Faeroes were part of the Hereditary Kingdom of Norway. In 1814, the Treaty of Kiel granted Denmark control over the islands, the Faroe Islands have been a self-governing country within the Kingdom of Denmark since 1948. The Faroese have control of most domestic matters, areas that remain the responsibility of Denmark include military defence, the police department, the justice department, currency, and foreign affairs. However, as they are not part of the customs area as Denmark, the Faroe Islands have an independent trade policy. The islands also have representation in the Nordic Council as members of the Danish delegation, the people of the Faroe Islands also compete as national team in certain sports. In Danish, the name Færøerne may reflect an Old Norse word fær, the morpheme øerne represents a plural of ø in Danish. The Danish name thus translates as the islands of sheep, in Faroese, the name appears as Føroyar. Oyar represents the plural of oy, older Faroese for island, the modern Faeroese word for island is oyggj. In the English language, their name is sometimes spelled Faeroe, archaeological evidence shows settlers living on the Faroe Islands in two successive periods prior to the arrival of the Norse, the first between 400 and 600 and the second between 600 and 800. Scientists from the University of Aberdeen have also found early cereal pollen from domesticated plants, archaeologist Mike Church noted that Dicuil mentioned what may have been the Faroes. He also suggested that the living there might have been from Ireland, Scotland or Scandinavia. A Latin account of a made by Brendan, an Irish monastic saint who lived around 484–578. This association, however, is far from conclusive in its description, Dicuil, an Irish monk of the early 9th century, wrote a more definite account. 800, bringing Old West Norse, which evolved into the modern Faroese language, according to Icelandic sagas such as Færeyjar Saga, one of the best known men in the island was Tróndur í Gøtu, a descendant of Scandinavian chiefs who had settled in Dublin, Ireland. Tróndur led the battle against Sigmund Brestursson, the Norwegian monarchy, a traditional name for the islands in Irish, Na Scigirí, possibly refers to the Skeggjar Beards, a nickname given to island dwellers

27.
Greenland
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Greenland is an autonomous constituent country within the Danish Realm between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for more than a millennium. The majority of its residents are Inuit, whose ancestors began migrating from the Canadian mainland in the 13th century, Greenland is the worlds largest island. Three-quarters of Greenland is covered by the permanent ice sheet outside Antarctica. With a population of about 56,480, it is the least densely populated country in the world, the Arctic Umiaq Line ferry acts as a lifeline for western Greenland, connecting the various cities and settlements. Greenland has been inhabited off and on for at least the last 4,500 years by Arctic peoples whose forebears migrated there from what is now Canada, Norsemen settled the uninhabited southern part of Greenland beginning in the 10th century, and Inuit peoples arrived in the 13th century. The Norse colonies disappeared in the late 15th century, soon after their demise, beginning in 1499, the Portuguese briefly explored and claimed the island, naming it Terra do Lavrador. In the early 18th century, Scandinavian explorers reached Greenland again, to strengthen trading and power, Denmark-Norway affirmed sovereignty over the island. Greenland was settled by Vikings more than a thousand years ago, Vikings set sail from Greenland and Iceland, discovering North America nearly 500 years before Columbus reached Caribbean islands. Though under continuous influence of Norway and Norwegians, Greenland was not formally under the Norwegian crown until 1262, the Kingdom of Norway was extensive and a military power until the mid-14th century. Thus, the two kingdoms resources were directed at creating Copenhagen, Norway became the weaker part and lost sovereignty over Greenland in 1814 when the union was dissolved. Greenland became a Danish colony in 1814, and was made a part of the Danish Realm in 1953 under the Constitution of Denmark, in 1973, Greenland joined the European Economic Community with Denmark. However, in a referendum in 1982, a majority of the population voted for Greenland to withdraw from the EEC which was effected in 1985, Greenland contains the worlds largest and most northernly national park, Northeast Greenland National Park. Greenland is divided into four municipalities - Sermersooq, Kujalleq, Qaasuitsup and it also retains control of monetary policy, providing an initial annual subsidy of DKK3.4 billion, which is planned to diminish gradually over time. Greenland expects to grow its economy based on increased income from the extraction of natural resources, the capital, Nuuk, held the 2016 Arctic Winter Games. At 70%, Greenland has one of the highest shares of renewable energy in the world, the early Viking settlers named the island as Greenland. In the Icelandic sagas, the Norwegian-born Icelander Erik the Red was said to be exiled from Iceland for manslaughter, along with his extended family and his thralls, he set out in ships to explore an icy land known to lie to the northwest. After finding an area and settling there, he named it Grœnland

28.
Iceland
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Iceland is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean. It has a population of 332,529 and an area of 103,000 km2, the capital and largest city is Reykjavík. Reykjavík and the areas in the southwest of the country are home to over two-thirds of the population. Iceland is volcanically and geologically active, the interior consists of a plateau characterised by sand and lava fields, mountains and glaciers, while many glacial rivers flow to the sea through the lowlands. Iceland is warmed by the Gulf Stream and has a climate, despite a high latitude just outside the Arctic Circle. Its high latitude and marine influence still keeps summers chilly, with most of the archipelago having a tundra climate. According to the ancient manuscript Landnámabók, the settlement of Iceland began in the year 874 AD when the Norwegian chieftain Ingólfr Arnarson became the first permanent settler on the island. In the following centuries, Norwegians, and to a lesser extent other Scandinavians, emigrated to Iceland, the island was governed as an independent commonwealth under the Althing, one of the worlds oldest functioning legislative assemblies. Following a period of strife, Iceland acceded to Norwegian rule in the 13th century. The establishment of the Kalmar Union in 1397 united the kingdoms of Norway, Denmark, Iceland thus followed Norways integration to that Union and came under Danish rule after Swedens secession from that union in 1523. In the wake of the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars, Icelands struggle for independence took form and culminated in independence in 1918, until the 20th century, Iceland relied largely on subsistence fishing and agriculture, and was among the poorest in Europe. Industrialisation of the fisheries and Marshall Plan aid following World War II brought prosperity, in 1994, it became a part of the European Economic Area, which further diversified the economy into sectors such as finance, biotechnology, and manufacturing. Iceland has an economy with relatively low taxes compared to other OECD countries. It maintains a Nordic social welfare system that provides health care. Iceland ranks high in economic, political and social stability and equality, in 2013, it was ranked as the 13th most-developed country in the world by the United Nations Human Development Index. Iceland runs almost completely on renewable energy, some bankers were jailed, and the economy has made a significant recovery, in large part due to a surge in tourism. Icelandic culture is founded upon the nations Scandinavian heritage, most Icelanders are descendants of Germanic and Gaelic settlers. Icelandic, a North Germanic language, is descended from Old Norse and is related to Faroese

29.
Norway
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The Antarctic Peter I Island and the sub-Antarctic Bouvet Island are dependent territories and thus not considered part of the Kingdom. Norway also lays claim to a section of Antarctica known as Queen Maud Land, until 1814, the kingdom included the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland. It also included Isle of Man until 1266, Shetland and Orkney until 1468, Norway has a total area of 385,252 square kilometres and a population of 5,258,317. The country shares a long border with Sweden. Norway is bordered by Finland and Russia to the north-east, Norway has an extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea. King Harald V of the Dano-German House of Glücksburg is the current King of Norway, erna Solberg became Prime Minister in 2013, replacing Jens Stoltenberg. A constitutional monarchy, Norway divides state power between the Parliament, the Cabinet and the Supreme Court, as determined by the 1814 Constitution, the kingdom is established as a merger of several petty kingdoms. By the traditional count from the year 872, the kingdom has existed continuously for 1,144 years, Norway has both administrative and political subdivisions on two levels, counties and municipalities. The Sámi people have an amount of self-determination and influence over traditional territories through the Sámi Parliament. Norway maintains close ties with the European Union and the United States, the country maintains a combination of market economy and a Nordic welfare model with universal health care and a comprehensive social security system. Norway has extensive reserves of petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood, the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the countrys gross domestic product. On a per-capita basis, Norway is the worlds largest producer of oil, the country has the fourth-highest per capita income in the world on the World Bank and IMF lists. On the CIAs GDP per capita list which includes territories and some regions, from 2001 to 2006, and then again from 2009 to 2017, Norway had the highest Human Development Index ranking in the world. It also has the highest inequality-adjusted ranking, Norway ranks first on the World Happiness Report, the OECD Better Life Index, the Index of Public Integrity and the Democracy Index. Norway has two names, Noreg in Nynorsk and Norge in Bokmål. The name Norway comes from the Old English word Norðrveg mentioned in 880, meaning way or way leading to the north. In contrasting with suðrvegar southern way for Germany, and austrvegr eastern way for the Baltic, the Anglo-Saxon of Britain also referred to the kingdom of Norway in 880 as Norðmanna land. This was the area of Harald Fairhair, the first king of Norway, and because of him

30.
Sweden
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Sweden, officially the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and Finland to the east, at 450,295 square kilometres, Sweden is the third-largest country in the European Union by area, with a total population of 10.0 million. Sweden consequently has a low density of 22 inhabitants per square kilometre. Approximately 85% of the lives in urban areas. Germanic peoples have inhabited Sweden since prehistoric times, emerging into history as the Geats/Götar and Swedes/Svear, Southern Sweden is predominantly agricultural, while the north is heavily forested. Sweden is part of the area of Fennoscandia. The climate is in very mild for its northerly latitude due to significant maritime influence. Today, Sweden is a monarchy and parliamentary democracy, with a monarch as head of state. The capital city is Stockholm, which is also the most populous city in the country, legislative power is vested in the 349-member unicameral Riksdag. Executive power is exercised by the government chaired by the prime minister, Sweden is a unitary state, currently divided into 21 counties and 290 municipalities. Sweden emerged as an independent and unified country during the Middle Ages, in the 17th century, it expanded its territories to form the Swedish Empire, which became one of the great powers of Europe until the early 18th century. Swedish territories outside the Scandinavian Peninsula were gradually lost during the 18th and 19th centuries, the last war in which Sweden was directly involved was in 1814, when Norway was militarily forced into personal union. Since then, Sweden has been at peace, maintaining a policy of neutrality in foreign affairs. The union with Norway was peacefully dissolved in 1905, leading to Swedens current borders, though Sweden was formally neutral through both world wars, Sweden engaged in humanitarian efforts, such as taking in refugees from German-occupied Europe. After the end of the Cold War, Sweden joined the European Union on 1 January 1995 and it is also a member of the United Nations, the Nordic Council, Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Sweden maintains a Nordic social welfare system that provides health care. The modern name Sweden is derived through back-formation from Old English Swēoþēod and this word is derived from Sweon/Sweonas. The Swedish name Sverige literally means Realm of the Swedes, excluding the Geats in Götaland, the etymology of Swedes, and thus Sweden, is generally not agreed upon but may derive from Proto-Germanic Swihoniz meaning ones own, referring to ones own Germanic tribe

31.
Estonia
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Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia, across the Baltic Sea lies Sweden in the west and Finland in the north. The territory of Estonia consists of a mainland and 2,222 islands and islets in the Baltic Sea, covering 45,339 km2 of land and water, and is influenced by a humid continental climate. The territory of Estonia has been inhabited since at least 6500 BC, in 1988, during the Singing Revolution, the Estonian Supreme Soviet issued the Estonian Sovereignty Declaration in defiance of Soviet rule, and independence was restored on 20 August 1991. Estonia is a parliamentary republic divided into fifteen counties. Its capital and largest city is Tallinn, with a population of 1.3 million, it is one of the least-populous member states of the European Union, Eurozone, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, OECD and Schengen Area. Estonia is a country with an advanced, high-income economy that is among the fastest growing in the EU. Its Human Development Index ranks very highly, and it performs favourably in measurements of economic freedom, civil liberties, the 2015 PISA test places Estonian high school students 3rd in the world, behind Singapore and Japan. Citizens of Estonia are provided with health care, free education. Since independence the country has developed its IT sector, becoming one of the worlds most digitally advanced societies. In 2005 Estonia became the first nation to hold elections over the Internet, in the Estonian language, the oldest known endonym of the Estonians was maarahvas, meaning country people or people of the land. The land inhabited by Estonians was called Maavald meaning Country Parish or Land Parish, one hypothesis regarding the modern name of Estonia is that it originated from the Aesti, a people described by the Roman historian Tacitus in his Germania. The historic Aesti were allegedly Baltic people, whereas the modern Estonians are Finno-Ugric, the geographical areas between Aesti and Estonia do not match, with Aesti being further down south. Ancient Scandinavian sagas refer to a land called Eistland, as the country is called in Icelandic. Early Latin and other ancient versions of the name are Estia and Hestia, esthonia was a common alternative English spelling prior to 1921. Human settlement in Estonia became possible 13,000 to 11,000 years ago, the oldest known settlement in Estonia is the Pulli settlement, which was on the banks of the river Pärnu, near the town of Sindi, in south-western Estonia. According to radiocarbon dating it was settled around 11,000 years ago, the earliest human inhabitation during the Mesolithic period is connected to Kunda culture, which is named after the town of Kunda in northern Estonia. At that time the country was covered with forests, and people lived in communities near bodies of water

32.
Latvia
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Latvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe, one of the three Baltic states. It is bordered by Estonia to the north, Lithuania to the south, Russia to the east, Latvia has 1,957,200 inhabitants and a territory of 64,589 km2. The country has a seasonal climate. Latvia is a parliamentary republic established in 1918. The capital city is Riga, the European Capital of Culture 2014, Latvia is a unitary state, divided into 119 administrative divisions, of which 110 are municipalities and 9 are cities. Latvians and Livs are the people of Latvia. Latvian and Lithuanian are the two surviving Baltic languages. Despite foreign rule from the 13th to 20th centuries, the Latvian nation maintained its identity throughout the generations via the language, Latvia and Estonia share a long common history. Until World War II, Latvia also had significant minorities of ethnic Germans, Latvia is historically predominantly Protestant Lutheran, except for the Latgale region in the southeast, which has historically been predominantly Roman Catholic. The Russian population has brought a significant portion of Eastern Orthodox Christians. The Republic of Latvia was founded on 18 November 1918, however, its de facto independence was interrupted at the outset of World War II. The peaceful Singing Revolution, starting in 1987, called for Baltic emancipation of Soviet rule and it ended with the Declaration on the Restoration of Independence of the Republic of Latvia on 4 May 1990, and restoring de facto independence on 21 August 1991. Latvia is a democratic and developed country and member of the European Union, NATO, the Council of Europe, the United Nations, CBSS, the IMF, NB8, NIB, OECD, OSCE, and WTO. For 2014, Latvia was listed 46th on the Human Development Index and it used the Latvian lats as its currency until it was replaced by the euro on 1 January 2014. The name Latvija is derived from the name of the ancient Latgalians, one of four Indo-European Baltic tribes, henry of Latvia coined the Latinisations of the countrys name, Lettigallia and Lethia, both derived from the Latgalians. The terms inspired the variations on the name in Romance languages from Letonia. Around 3000 BC, the ancestors of the Latvian people settled on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea. The Balts established trade routes to Rome and Byzantium, trading local amber for precious metals, by 900 AD, four distinct Baltic tribes inhabited Latvia, Curonians, Latgalians, Selonians, Semigallians, as well as the Livonians speaking a Finnic language

33.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci

34.
Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed

35.
India
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India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and it is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast. It shares land borders with Pakistan to the west, China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast, in the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Indias Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a border with Thailand. The Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE, in the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed. Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, early political consolidations took place under the Maurya and Gupta empires, the later peninsular Middle Kingdoms influenced cultures as far as southeast Asia. In the medieval era, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived, much of the north fell to the Delhi sultanate, the south was united under the Vijayanagara Empire. The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal empire, in the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, and in the mid-19th under British crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which later, under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance, in 2015, the Indian economy was the worlds seventh largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity. Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption, malnutrition, a nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the third largest standing army in the world and ranks sixth in military expenditure among nations. India is a constitutional republic governed under a parliamentary system. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society and is home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats. The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindu, the latter term stems from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, which was the historical local appellation for the Indus River. The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, which translates as The people of the Indus, the geographical term Bharat, which is recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations. Scholars believe it to be named after the Vedic tribe of Bharatas in the second millennium B. C. E and it is also traditionally associated with the rule of the legendary emperor Bharata. Gaṇarājya is the Sanskrit/Hindi term for republic dating back to the ancient times, hindustan is a Persian name for India dating back to the 3rd century B. C. E. It was introduced into India by the Mughals and widely used since then and its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety

36.
Ghana
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Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a unitary presidential constitutional democracy, located along the Gulf of Guinea and Atlantic Ocean, in the subregion of West Africa. Spanning a land mass of 238,535 km², Ghana is bordered by the Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, Togo in the east, Ghana means Warrior King in the Soninke language. The territory of present-day Ghana has been inhabited for a millennium, numerous kingdoms and empires emerged over the centuries, of which the most powerful was the Kingdom of Ashanti. Beginning in the 15th century, numerous European powers contested the area for trading rights, following over a century of native resistance, Ghanas current borders were established by the 1900s as the British Gold Coast. On 6 March 1957, it became the first sub-Saharan African nation to become independent of European colonisation, a multicultural nation, Ghana has a population of approximately 27 million, spanning a variety of ethnic, linguistic and religious groups. Five percent of the population practices traditional faiths,71. 2% adhere to Christianity and 17. 6% are Muslim and its diverse geography and ecology ranges from coastal savannahs to tropical jungles. Ghana is a country led by a president who is both head of state and head of the government. Ghanas economy is one of the strongest and most diversified in Africa, following a century of relative stability. Ghanas growing economic prosperity and democratic political system have made it a power in West Africa. It is a member of the Non-Aligned Movement, the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States, Group of 24, Ghana was already recognized as one of the great kingdoms in Bilad el-Sudan by the ninth century. Ghana was inhabited in the Middle Ages and the Age of Discovery by a number of ancient predominantly Akan kingdoms in the Southern and this included the Ashanti Empire, the Akwamu, the Bonoman, the Denkyira, and the Mankessim Kingdom. Until the 11th century, the majority of modern Ghanas territorial area was unoccupied and uninhabited by humans. Although the area of present-day Ghana in West Africa has experienced many population movements, by the early 11th century, the Akans were firmly established in the Akan state called Bonoman, for which the Brong-Ahafo Region is named. From the 13th century, Akans emerged from what is believed to have been the Bonoman area, to create several Akan states of Ghana and these states included Bonoman, Ashanti, Denkyira, Mankessim Kingdom, and Akwamu Eastern region. By the 19th century, the territory of the part of Ghana was included in the Kingdom of Ashanti. The Kingdom of Ashanti government operated first as a loose network, prior to Akan contact with Europeans, the Akan Ashanti people created an advanced economy based on principally gold and gold bar commodities then traded with the states of Africa. The earliest known kingdoms to emerge in modern Ghana were the Mole-Dagbani states, the Mole-Dagombas came on horseback from present-day Burkina Faso under a single leader, Naa Gbewaa. The death of Naa Gbewaa caused civil war among his children, some of whom broke off and founded separate states including Dagbon, Mamprugu, Mossi, Nanumba, Akan trade with European states began after contact with Portuguese in the 15th century

37.
Regent
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A regent is a person appointed to administer a state because the monarch is a minor, is absent or is incapacitated. The rule of a regent or regents is called a regency, a regent or regency council may be formed ad hoc or in accordance with a constitutional rule. Regent is sometimes a formal title, if the formally appointed regent is unavailable or cannot serve on a temporary basis, a Regent ad interim may be appointed to fill the gap. In a monarchy, a regent usually governs due to one of these reasons and this was the case in the Kingdom of Finland and the Kingdom of Hungary, where the royal line was considered extinct in the aftermath of World War I. In Iceland, the regent represented the King of Denmark as sovereign of Iceland until the country became a republic in 1944, in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, kings were elective, which often led to a fairly long interregnum. In the interim, it was the Roman Catholic Primate who served as the regent, in the small republic of San Marino, the two Captains Regent, or Capitani Reggenti, are elected semi-annually as joint heads of state and of government. Famous regency periods include that of the Prince Regent, later George IV of the United Kingdom, giving rise to terms such as Regency era. Strictly this period lasted from 1811 to 1820, when his father George III was insane, as of 1 December 2016, Liechtenstein is the only country with an active regency. The term regent may refer to lower than the ruler of a country. The term may be used in the governance of organisations, typically as an equivalent of director, some university managers in North America are called regents and a management board for a college or university may be titled the Board of Regents. The term regent is used for members of governing bodies of institutions such as the national banks of France. This type of group portrait was popular in Dutch Golden Age painting during the 17th century, in the Dutch East Indies, a regent was a native prince allowed to rule de facto colonized state as a regentschap. Consequently, in the state of Indonesia, the term regent is used in English to mean a bupati. Again in Belgium and France, Regent is the title of a teacher in a lower secondary school. In the Philippines, specifically, the University of Santo Tomas, the Father Regent and they also form the Council of Regents that serves as the highest administrative council of the university. In the Society of Jesus, a regent is a training to be a Jesuit. A regent in the Jesuits is often assigned to teach in a school or some other academic institution as part of the formation toward final vows, list of regents Viceroy, an individual who, in a colony or province, exercised the power of a monarch on his behalf

38.
Treaty of Kiel
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Specifically excluded from the exchange were the Norwegian dependencies of Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands, which remained in the union with Denmark. Norway unsuccessfully contested the Danish claim to all of Greenland in the East Greenland case of 1931–1933, however, not all provisions of the treaty would come into force. Norway declared its independence, adopted a Constitution and elected Crown Prince Christian Frederik as its own king, Sweden therefore refused to hand over Swedish Pomerania, which instead passed to Prussia after the Congress of Vienna in 1815. After a short war with Sweden, Norway accepted entering into a union with Sweden at the Convention of Moss. King Christian Frederik abdicated after convening an extraordinary Storting, which revised the Constitution to allow for the Union and it was formally established when the Storting elected Charles XIII as king of Norway on 4 November 1814. In the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars, Denmark-Norway and the Kingdom of Sweden tried to maintain neutrality, the United Kingdom, which had declared war on France in 1803, paid subsidies to Sweden. Before Gustav IV Adolf marched his forces out of Swedish Pomerania, in 1807, Napoleonic forces seized Swedish Pomerania and forced Prussia and Russia to sign the Treaty of Tilsit. Sweden could no longer uphold her anti-French foreign policy, and French Marshal Jean Baptiste Bernadotte was elected heir to the Swedish throne in 1810, Denmark-Norway entered an alliance with France after the second British bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807. In 1812, Napoleons forces were decimated in their attempt to subdue Russia. Sweden allied with Russia on 30 August 1812, with the United Kingdom on 3 March 1813, previously, on 23 March 1813, she had declared war on Napoleon. Bernadottes condition for entering the anti-Napoleonic alliance was the gain of Norway, Prussia however did not acknowledge this claim at first. Thus, Bernadotte hesitated to enter the war with full force, when Prussia finally accepted the Swedish claim to Norway on 22 July, Sweden joined the alliance of Reichenbach concluded between Russia, the United Kingdom and Prussia on 14/15 June. With three armies, the allies subsequently cleared Northern Germany of French forces, Denmark, who had maintained the alliance with Napoleon because of the Swedish claim to Norway, was isolated and, as a consequence of the war, bankrupt. It consisted of 14 articles, to two articles were added in Brussels on 7 April. In article III, the United Kingdom was obliged to return all occupied Danish possessions to the Danish king, excepted was the island of Heligoland, where the British king was granted full and unlimited sovereignty. Article VIII was concerned with the abolishment of slave trade, in article X, the British king promised the Danish king to negotiate further compensation for Denmarks territorial cessions to Sweden in a pending final peace. In article XIII, older Dano-British treaties were confirmed, the treaty between the Kingdom of Denmark and the Kingdom of Sweden was negotiated by Danish diplomat Edmund Bourke and Swedish envoy Baron Gustaf af Wetterstedt with British mediation. It consisted of 28 articles and one separate article, in article IV, the Danish king in his and his successors name irrevocably and forever renounced claims to the Kingdom of Norway in favor of the Swedish king

39.
Schleswig-Holstein
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Schleswig-Holstein is the northernmost of the 16 states of Germany, comprising most of the historical duchy of Holstein and the southern part of the former Duchy of Schleswig. Its capital city is Kiel, other cities are Lübeck. Also known in more dated English as Sleswick-Holsatia, the Danish name is Slesvig-Holsten, the Low German name is Sleswig-Holsteen, historically, the name can also refer to a larger region, containing both present-day Schleswig-Holstein and the former South Jutland County in Denmark. The term Holstein derives from Old Saxon Holseta Land, originally, it referred to the central of the three Saxon tribes north of the River Elbe, Tedmarsgoi, Holstein and Sturmarii. The area of the tribe of the Holsts was between the Stör River and Hamburg, and after Christianization, their church was in Schenefeld. Saxon Holstein became a part of the Holy Roman Empire after Charlemagnes Saxon campaigns in the eighth century. Since 811, the frontier of Holstein was marked by the River Eider. The term Schleswig comes from the city of Schleswig, around 1100, the Duke of Saxony gave Holstein, as it was his own country, to Count Adolf I of Schauenburg. Schleswig and Holstein have at different times belonged in part or completely to either Denmark or Germany, the exception is that Schleswig had never been part of Germany until the Second Schleswig War in 1864. For many centuries, the King of Denmark was both a Danish Duke of Schleswig and a German Duke of Holstein, essentially, Schleswig was either integrated into Denmark or was a Danish fief, and Holstein was a German fief and once a sovereign state long ago. Both were for centuries ruled by the kings of Denmark. In the church, following the reformation, German was used in the part of Schleswig. This would later prove decisive for shaping national sentiments in the population, the administration of both duchies was conducted in German, despite the fact that they were governed from Copenhagen. The German national awakening that followed the Napoleonic Wars gave rise to a popular movement in Holstein. This development was paralleled by an equally strong Danish national awakening in Denmark and this movement called for the complete reintegration of Schleswig into the Kingdom of Denmark and demanded an end to discrimination against Danes in Schleswig. The ensuing conflict is called the Schleswig-Holstein Question. e. Not only in the Kingdom of Denmark, but also to Danes living in Schleswig, furthermore, they demanded protection for the Danish language in Schleswig. A liberal constitution for Holstein was not seriously considered in Copenhagen and these demands were rejected by the Danish government in 1848, and the Germans of Holstein and southern Schleswig rebelled

40.
Duchy of Schleswig
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The region is also called Sleswick in English. Roman sources place the homeland of the Jute tribe north of the river Eider and that of the Angles to its south, who in turn abutted the neighbouring Saxons. During the early Viking Age, Haithabu - Scandinavias biggest trading centre - was located in this region and its construction, and in particular its great expansion around 737, has been interpreted as an indication of the emergence of a unified Danish state. In May 1931 scientists of the National Museum of Denmark announced the finding of eighteen Viking graves with the remains of eighteen men in them, the discovery came during excavations in Schleswig. The skeletons indicated that the men were bigger proportioned than twentieth-century Danish men, each of the graves was laid out from east to west. Researchers surmised that the bodies were entombed in wooden coffins originally, towards the end of the Early Middle Ages, Schleswig formed part of the historical Lands of Denmark as Denmark unified out of a number of petty chiefdoms in the 8th to 10th centuries. The southern boundary of Denmark in the region of the Eider River, the Treaty of Heiligen was signed in 811 between the Danish King Hemming and Charlemagne, by which the border was established at the Eider. During the 10th century there were wars between East Francia and Denmark. In 1027, Conrad II and Canute the Great again settled their mutual border at the Eider. In 1115, king Niels created his nephew Canute Lavard - a son of his predecessor Eric I - Earl of Schleswig, in the 1230s, Southern Jutland was allotted as an appanage to Abel Valdemarsen, Canutes great-grandson, a younger son of Valdemar II of Denmark. Feuds and marital alliances brought the Abel dynasty into a connection with the German Duchy of Holstein by the 15th century. The latter was a subordinate to the Holy Roman Empire. The title Duke of Schleswig was inherited in 1460 by the kings of Norway who were also regularly elected kings of Denmark simultaneously. This was an anomaly – a king holding a ducal title, the title and anomaly survived presumably because it was already co-regally held by the kings sons. Between 1544 and 1713/20 the ducal reign had become a condominium, with the royal House of Oldenburg, a third branch in the condominium, the short-lived House of Haderslev, was already extinct in 1580 by the time of John the Elder. On the west coast the Danish diocese of Ribe stopped about 5 km north of the present border and this line corresponds remarkably well with the present border. In the 17th century a series of wars between Denmark and Sweden—which Denmark lost—devastated the region economically, however the nobility responded with a new agricultural system that restored prosperity. In the period 1600 to 1800 the region experienced the growth of manorialism of the common in the rye-growing regions of eastern Germany

41.
Duchy of Holstein
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The Duchy of Holstein was the northernmost state of the Holy Roman Empire, located in the present German state of Schleswig-Holstein. It was established when King Christian I of Denmark had his County of Holstein-Rendsburg elevated to a duchy by Emperor Frederick III in 1474, Holstein was ruled jointly with the Duchy of Schleswig by members of the Danish House of Oldenburg for its entire existence. From 1490 to 1523 and again from 1544 to 1773 the Duchy was partitioned between various Oldenburg branches, most notably the dukes of Holstein-Glückstadt and Holstein-Gottorp, the Duchy ceased to exist when it was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia in 1866 after the Second Schleswig War. The lands of Schleswig beyond the river remained a fief of the Danish Crown, while Holstein became a part of East Francia, the Kingdom of Germany. Adolf VIII, the last Count of Holstein-Rendsburg and Duke of Schleswig had died without heirs in 1459. As Schleswig had been a Danish fief, it had to back to King Christian I of Denmark. He was backed by the nobility, who supported the continued common administration of both lands and by the 1460 Treaty of Ribe proclaimed him as the new Count of Holstein. Nevertheless, the comital Holstein lands south of the Eider River officially remained a fief held by the Ascanian dukes of Saxe-Lauenburg. In 1474 Emperor Frederick III conferred Imperial immediacy to Christian by elevating him to a Duke of Holstein, from 1648 the royal parts of Schleswig and Holstein were administered out of Glückstadt and became known as the Duchy of Schleswig-Holstein-Glückstadt. Before 1773 its Holstein territory consisted of the following Ämter, Rendsburg, South Dithmarschen, Steinburg, Segeberg, the Duchy of Schleswig-Holstein in Haderslev, held by Duke Hans the Elder. Hans had no issue and after his death in 1580, his territories were divided among his brothers, the Duchy of Schleswig-Holstein in Gottorp, held by Duke Adolf and his successors. In addition, significant parts of Holstein were jointly administered by the Dukes of Holstein-Glückstadt, in 1640, the County of Holstein-Pinneberg, whose ruling house was extinct, was merged in the royal part of the Duchy of Holstein. In 1713, during the Great Northern War, the estates of the Dukes of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp in Schleswig including Schloss Gottorf were conquered by royal Danish troops, in the 1720 Treaty of Frederiksborg, Duke Charles Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp ceded them to his liege lord the Danish crown. His remaining territories formed the Duchy of Holstein-Gottorp, administered from Kiel, with the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the Duchy of Holstein gained sovereignty. Denmark defended its rule over Holstein in the First Schleswig War of 1848-51 against the Kingdom of Prussia, however, in Second Schleswig War Prussian and Austrian troops conquered Schleswig. Christian IX of Denmark had to renounce both Schleswig and Holstein in the Treaty of Vienna, Holstein was put under Austrian administration, until annexed by Prussia in 1866 after the Austro-Prussian War. The Danish king in his function as duke of Holstein, and duke of Schleswig, 1523/45–1550, Johan Rantzau 1550–1556, Count Bertram von Ahlefeldt 1556–1598, Heinrich Rantzau 1598–1600, vacancy. Peace of Prague List of rulers of Schleswig-Holstein Schleswig-Holstein at Worldstatesmen

42.
Wends
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Wends is a historical name for the West Slavs living near Germanic settlement areas. It does not refer to a people, but to various peoples, tribes or groups depending on where. In the Middle Ages the term Wends often referred to Western Slavs living within the Holy Roman Empire, mieszko I, the first historical ruler of Poland, also appeared as Dagome, King of the Wends. The name has survived in Finnic languages denoting Russia. According to one theory, Germanic peoples first applied this name to the ancient Veneti, and then after the period they transferred it to their new neighbours. The Germans in the south used the term Winde instead of Wende and applied it, just as the Germans in the north, to Slavs they had contact with, following the 8th century, the Frankish kings and their successors organised nearly all Wendish land into marches. This process later turned into the series of crusades, by the 12th century, all Wendish lands had become part of the Holy Roman Empire. In the course of the Ostsiedlung, which reached its peak in the 12th to 14th centuries, due to the process of assimilation following German settlement, many Slavs west of the Oder adopted the German culture and language. Only some rural communities which did not have an admixture with Germans. With the gradual decline of the use of these local Slavic tongues, some sources claim that in the 13th century there were actual historic people called Wends or Vends living as far as northern Latvia around the city of Wenden. Henry of Livonia in his 13th-century Latin chronicle described a tribe called the Vindi, today, only one group of Wends still exists, the Lusatian Sorbs in present-day eastern Germany. The term Wends derived from the Roman-era people called in Latin Veneti, Venedi or Venethi and this people was mentioned by Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy as inhabiting the Baltic coast. There they assimilated the remaining Germanic population that had not left the area in the Migration period. Their German neighbours adapted the term they had been using for peoples east of the River Elbe before to the Slavs, calling them Wends as they called the Venedi before and probably the Vandals also. In his late sixth century work History of Armenia, Movses Khorenatsi mentions their raids into the lands named Vanand after them and their tribal names were derived from local place names, sometimes adopting the Germanic tradition. Settlements were secured by round burghs made of wood and clay, some tribes unified into larger, duchy-like units. For example, the Obotrites evolved from the unification of the Holstein, the Lutici were an alliance of tribes living between Obotrites and Pomeranians. They did not unify under a duke, but remained independent and their leaders met in the temple of Rethra

At the death bed of Niels Kaas. The 17-year-old Christian IV receives from the dying chancellor the keys to the vault where the royal crown and sceptre are stored. History painting by Carl Bloch, 1880.

14th century medieval ewer looted from the Ashanti Empire in 1896 by British forces. The ewer was originally made for the court of Richard II. Currently housed at the British Museum. Historians are unsure how it came to reside with the Ashanti Empire in good condition after 500 years.